Mosul air strikes kill dozens of civilians: Iraqi officials

Air strikes carried out in recent days have killed dozens of civilians in west Mosul, where Iraqi forces are battling jihadists, officials said on Saturday.

Both Iraqi aircraft and a US-led international coalition are bombing the Islamic State group in the Mosul area.

"There are dozens of bodies still under the rubble," Bashar al-Kiki, the head of the Nineveh provincial council, told AFP.

Nawfal Hammadi, the governor of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital, said the coalition had carried out the strikes in the city's Mosul al-Jadida area, killing "more than 130 civilians."

Officials said dozens of civilians were killed. (AFP) ()Iraqi aircraft and a US-led coalition are bombing the IS group in the Mosul area. (AFP) ()The strikes damaged more than 27 residential buildings. (AFP) ()

"The Daesh terrorist organisation is seeking to stop the advance of the Iraqi forces in Mosul at any cost, and it is gathering civilians... and using them as human shields," Hammadi told AFP, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

Other officials said that hundreds of people had died in the strikes. It was not possible to independently confirm the tolls.

An Iraqi brigadier general said that strikes had damaged more than 27 residential buildings and that three of them were completely destroyed.